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Digital Risk

The ADT Corp., the newly independent company created by the recent breakup of Tyco International, appears on its way to a public-private partnership in Florida that would result in ADT adding more than 100 new jobs.

Palm Beach County yesterday approved giving ADT a grant of $184,000 in return for the Boca Raton, Fla.-based company creating 120 new jobs and retaining 260 jobs at its headquarters, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper.

The county approval is just one step in the process. “The proposal also calls for ADT to get $184,000 form Boca Raton and about $1.3 million from the state,” according to the newspaper.

Sarah Cohn, ADT director of media relations, noted that the proposal is not finalized because the state still needs to sign off on it.

The proposed 120 jobs would be “a mixture of all different types of corporate positions,” she said.

Why is ADT, a leading home security company with some 16,000 employees and about $3 billion in sales each year, seeking such taxpayer-funded incentives?

Cohn told me that seeking such incentives is “normal practice” for a lot of companies. “Many state and local governments seek to incentivize companies to stay in their areas," she said.

Indeed, ADT, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 1, was just one of three companies that county commissioners unanimously approved to receive such incentives, according to the article in the Sun Sentinel. Aerospace company Pratt & Whitney and Digital Risk, a financial services company, each was approved for $300,000 in county grants and millions more in state and city funding to create jobs, the newspaper said.

The Sun Sentinel noted that there has been criticism about investing taxpayer dollars in private companies, but that county officials said creating jobs makes the investment worthwhile.

The newspaper quotes County Commission Chairwoman Shelley Vana as saying: "We are competing with a lot of other places for jobs. We are going to be smart about how we do it.”